


5 Ways the First Never Appeared to Xander

by nwhepcat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: 5 things challenge, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-05
Updated: 2009-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:32:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1. A magazine picture of an ice cream sundae. 2. Getting almost easy. 3. What she does. 4. Smoke. 5. Last night on earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Ways the First Never Appeared to Xander

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for BtVS through S7. Warnings: ranging from angsty to dark. Dubious-con self-pleasuring, if that makes any sense.
> 
> Not mine; no money here.

1.

 

 

Xander sets the empty beer bottle with the others and heaves a sigh. Bad way to spend an evening, much too reminiscent of the post-non-wedding funk. But he can't get these picture out of his head: Anya run through with a sword. Halfrek going up in flames and the look on Anya's face. Anya walking away from him, refusing the comfort of his company.

 

 

Maybe he should snap off the stupid TV and go find Buffy on patrol, instead of brooding like Angel in his finer moments.

 

 

Yeah, that's a plan, when he's at least 1.5 beers past having any fine motor skills or sense of judgment.

 

 

He could go keep Dawn company. She's probably watching the same stupid SciFi Channel movie.

 

 

Xander gets up to drain out some of the beers, splash cold water on his face. He's not going over there buzzed. Toweling off his face, he decides he'll go out onto the balcony and suck down some cool air, see if that helps.

 

 

But when he steps out of the bathroom, he's completely and suddenly unbuzzed. There on his sofa sits a woman with dark tousled hair and a very short skirt. And very nice legs, for a dead woman.

 

 

"Xander."

 

 

"Ms., uh, Ms. Calen--"

 

 

She waves a hand. They must have manicure shops in, in, wherever she's been. "Oh please. Jenny. You should be more careful about locking your door."

 

 

He was certain he had. He glances toward it.

 

 

"Don't worry, I locked it," she says.

 

 

"What are --" That seems rude. "It's been a long time."

 

 

"It's been five years."

 

 

"Right. Right. So it has." Seems like a million. Seems like last week.

 

 

"My people have a tradition, Xander. Five years after death, a daughter of the Kalderash can appear to a person she has regrets about. So. Here I am."

 

 

Here she is. Looking not five years dead, but warm and sort of glowing -- not _glowing_ glowing -- and very damn voluptuous. Her blouse is buttoned just so, to make that last part fairly evident.

 

 

"Regrets? About me? Trust me, we're good."

 

 

"We could be. That's what I've been thinking."

 

 

"Don't, uh, don't you want to see Giles?" Here he is stammering like Giles.

 

 

Jenny Calendar's mouth twists in disdain. "Rupert? The only regret I have there is that I wasted so much time on him. I'm done with him. After I touched you, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted -- but then Angelus -- We never had the time."

 

 

"Touched me?" The stuttering problem has not gotten any better. His memory isn't stirring, but something else is.

 

 

Jenny shifts on the sofa, flashes him the Sharon Stone. "That time in the library. All the girls wanted you."

 

 

"That was a spell. They all stopped. _You_ stopped." Something that isn't stopping is the rush of blood to a very specific body part. This is the love of Giles's life here, and he can't be having erections while in the same room with her.

 

 

"I never stopped," Jenny says. "I just died before I got a chance to do anything about it."

 

 

"So, um, what happens here? You air your feelings of regret, and that's that?"

 

 

"Sit down and I'll show you."

 

 

"No showing necessary, really." She's showing him plenty right now. Why does he feel so very seventeen right now? Like everything with the love spell just happened.

 

 

"Sit down, Xander."

 

 

His legs sort of give out and he happens to be standing over the easy chair. It's not exactly like he's obeying her.

 

 

Maybe it looks that way, because she says, "That's a good boy" as she gets to her feet. She kicks off her shoes and barefoots it over to the chair. "You want me, don't you?" she says as she stands over him. "You've always wanted me."

 

 

It's true enough, he guesses, in that vaguely seventeen-year-old way, where you want everyone you think is hot, and yeah, he thought she was hot. Thinks she's hot.

 

 

She leans over him, bracing her hands on the arms of the chair. The chair doesn't dip with her weight. Jenny flicks a glance at his crotch and smiles. "Tell me the truth, now."

 

 

"This doesn't feel right. Giles--"

 

 

She moves up and back, towering over him now, eyes blazing. "I'm not Giles's property. I've chosen you. Are you telling me I can't make my own choices?"

 

 

"_No._ Not -- no." He wonders if dead Gypsies can curse you. She looks like she'd like to.

 

 

Jenny softens. "I understand loyalty. Believe me, I was born and bred to it. But you're letting yourself be bound by ancient history. And so am I. I came here to resolve this. Have a little taste of what I couldn't have." She closes in the distance again, unbuttoning her blouse and caressing the creamy lace and skin beneath. "Wouldn't you like that too?"

 

 

He could stop this if he wanted to. This is not a spell. He wishes it was. (_No moral responsibility, just like Anya said about the jacket mojo._)

 

 

She leans over him again, soft skin and lace and perfume. Xander reaches for her.

 

 

His hand passes through her.

 

 

"Not much of a taste, is it?" Her voice is ruefully amused. "Like looking at a magazine picture of a hot fudge sundae. But knowing you would, that's everything. And I can do something for you." She steps in closer, her legs straddling his, bending to whisper in his ear.

 

 

She talks him through it, every sensation so richly described it really does feel like he's having sex with her and not his own hand. Ghost-Jenny works her own hand mojo as she leads him through his, and her cries mingle with his. He covers himself as soon as she withdraws.

 

 

"That was not the slightest bit disappointing," she says, breathless.

 

 

It shouldn't disappoint Xander, either. After all, he's a guy who'll make out with his friend's girlfriend, cheat on his own girlfriend, dump a girl at the altar. Having the ghostly equivalent of cybersex with Giles's girlfriend shouldn't surprise him or disappoint him, but it does.

 

 

Ghost-Jenny sashays over to the sofa and slips back into her shoes. "I'm going to investigate loopholes," she says. "Find a way to come back."

 

 

The really fucked-up thing is, he wants her to. Satisfying her regret opened up a matching one within him, one that _isn't_ satisfied by just one time. Not so much a regret as a compulsion. It will separate him from his friends. He can't go hang with Dawn with that taint touching him. Can't fight and work at Buffy's side, knowing how he's betrayed Giles. He'd be trading his longtime friendships for a phantom girlfriend who might or might not return.

 

 

She pushes her hand through her dark tangles of hair, a gesture that always got to him when he was in high school. "Would you like that?"

 

 

"Yeah," he whispers. "I would."

 

 

Jenny offers him a smile that spears right through him. "I'll see what I can do."

 

 

As she reaches the door she turns one last time. "One more thing. I was supposed to deliver a message: _From beneath you it devours._"

 

 

2.

 

 

Xander sets his toolbox down beside the lengths of lumber, already cut to fit the living room window. He's got a little notebook now, with measurements of all the doors and windows at Buffy's house, and his, and Giles' place. He figures it's saved at least an hour per repair job since.

 

 

It's getting almost easy, the post-demonic-party cleanup.

 

 

No. That's a lie.

 

 

He was here in the morning for the debris removal, and got to witness Dawn's big meltdown.

 

 

Not easy at all.

 

 

She'd been brave and tough last night, despite being terrorized. Xander wouldn't have held it together as well, he's sure. But she'd lost it during the cleanup, as they'd piled up and thrown out splinters and shards.

 

 

"It's all crap," she murmured, and plopped down in the middle of the floor, dissolving into sobs. It was a while before the next intelligible statement, but they eventually found out what was going on. Little losses, pieces of her childhood and favorite objects of Joyce's. Finally they made the connection -- what was really hurting her was the memory of the big magic purge, when Willow was trying to get straight. In the pile of magical objects that went was a Kokopelli figurine, her mom's. One of Dawn's favorite things, sacrificed to the greater good. Another little tether to her memories of Joyce, slender and delicate, snipped. Quick, like yanking off a Band-Aid, so it doesn't hurt. Except it does, and for a long time.

 

 

Once Dawn pulled herself together, Buffy took her out for a drive. Will left too, but not with them. Xander recognizes the signs of guilt.

 

 

He sighs and starts tearing at the splintered windowsill.

 

 

A long time later he takes a break, digging his fists into his lower back to knuckle out a knot, thinking about something cold to drink. He turns to head for the kitchen, but something catches the edge of his vision, just at the corner of his eye.

 

 

A spill of golden brown hair, soft doe eyes. An embroidered Ren Faire looking top that pushes her breasts up, presents them like two perfect peaches.

 

 

The sight catches him mid-breath, and he can't let it out. "Tara."

 

 

She offers that shy, sweet smile. Her eyes cut away from him, then back. "Xander. Still putting things back together."

 

 

"Yeah, well. It's what I do."

 

 

"It's hard, isn't it? Carrying on when your heart is breaking."

 

 

"Dawn, y'know? She's stuck with all this shit she didn't create. She's an innocent." Tara knows about innocence, he wants to say, but he can't. As long as he's known her, she's still shy in a lot of ways. That seems out of bounds somehow, too personal.

 

 

"There's more to her than you think. She hides things well."

 

 

Now this is what he's missed about Tara. How clearly she sees, how wise and gentle she is.

 

 

But--

 

 

"You're--"

 

 

That quick smile again. "Dead. Yes."

 

 

"This is gonna sound stupid, but ... are you ... okay?" Buffy told them there's a heaven. Surely Tara would be there too.

 

 

"More than okay. It's peaceful. Your heart has time to heal."

 

 

That's nice, he thinks, distracted. Anxiety prickles in the pit of his stomach. He really needs to be getting this window done.

 

 

"Don't you just want to rest sometimes? Get away from this?"

 

 

"What? Oh, well sure, sometimes." Not that he'd know what to do with himself. Read a Clancy novel on the beach? He shrugs. "I'm needed."

 

 

"So you tell yourself."

 

 

He looks at her sharply, but her voice is as soft as always, her eyes as warm and kind.

 

 

"You've struggled to prove your worth for a long time," she says. "I know what that's like." She must; sympathy suffuses her voice. "You can take a rest from all that too."

 

 

"And do what?"

 

 

"Surrender. There's a black void inside you, and you could let it have you. It already does, really. Once you stop pretending, you can have a rest."

 

 

"What are you?"

 

 

"I'm the girl your best friend was banging. That was good, FYI, but not nearly as good as in your fantasies."

 

 

"You're not her."

 

 

"It's going to have you," the Tara-thing says. "The void. _I'm_ going to have you."

 

 

As Xander takes a step back, his foot bumps the toolbox. He bends quickly down and grabs his hammer, never taking his eyes off fake-Tara. "Take a hike."

 

 

"You don't have to worry that I'll suck your soul out. You know you don't have one. Give in to it. Stop wasting time."

 

 

Xander throws the hammer at it, but it sails right through her body and lands with a crash and a clatter.

 

 

Its hair turns darkest black, like Willow's was after ... after Tara. "Bored now," it says, and vanishes.

 

 

Xander retrieves his hammer in a pile of porcelain shards. Another little loss, another dagger in Dawn's heart. Great.

 

 

He turns back to the window.

 

_Stop wasting time._

 

 

3.

 

 

"It's late," Xander says. "I'm gonna avail myself of the little slayers' room and head home."

 

 

The bathroom is miraculously free of potentials, but Miss Kitty Fantastico lies curled on the toilet lid, eying him balefully. He moves to raise the lid and she grudgingly jumps down and yowls at the door to be let out.

 

 

"In a second," he says through a yawn, then shakes his head. He's so exhausted he's seeing things. Miss K-Fan went to her reward a while back.

 

 

He finishes, washes and leaves, and one of the girls edges past him into the bathroom.

 

 

The cat streaks past him and races down the stairs. That's what she does, and half the time she stops dead halfway down. One of these days someone's going to break their--

 

 

4.

 

 

Waves and waves of pain. Sometimes it's smothered in a thick blanket of drugs, others it's sharp and worse than anything he's ever known. It takes up all the room in his head then, except the simplest concepts, like _Hurts_ and _Blind_.

 

 

They're quick with the meds when Xander reaches that point, at least. The nurse stays and talks to him until his brain starts getting woolly again. She helps him remember to breathe. The first time she asks him to tell her all about his favorite vacation place ever, but there's nothing to tell. He's never really been anywhere. A motel on fast-food row in Oxnard.

 

 

She gives him hers. A cabin in North Idaho with a stream outside that sounds so pretty like liquid windchimes, she says. At night it lulls you into deep and restful sleep, and in the day the light glitters on its rushing surface like diamonds. There's a pair of eagles with a nest the size of a Buick.

 

 

When she paints this picture Xander can close his good eye without seeing empty black. He drifts, then he sleeps, and when he wakes the pain is wrapped in layers and layers of fuzzy soft pharmaceuticals.

 

 

Someone's in his room when he wakes, though he thinks it's still the middle of the night. The hospital is so quiet. He thinks it's her at first, the nurse, changed into street clothes, but she's more familiar than that.

 

 

Xander tries to push the woolliness aside. "Joyce?"

 

 

She comes to his bedside then. "Xander, sweetie. I had to come. I couldn't stand thinking of you like this. All alone."

 

 

"They'll be back. In the morning, Giles said." It's hard to make thoughts, much less words.

 

 

"Of course they will." Even through the haze, Xander recognizes the ring of phony reassurance. "Whoever's left, as soon as it's safe."

 

 

"Left?"

 

 

"It's terrible. You're lucky you weren't there to see."

 

 

His face and hands feel suddenly cold. "What happened?"

 

 

"When you're better. There's nothing you can do now anyway." There's a glow about Joyce, even delivering this news. "Maybe you can befriend the new slayer too. Though I hope she's not one of these. Kind of a meager crop, don't you think?"

 

 

"Get out." It took a while, but the realization has burned off the fog.

 

 

It hangs onto Joyce's form. "You've been with her a long time. A thorn in my side, a pain in my ass."

 

 

"Fuck off. You're smoke. You can't do anything. From beneath you it talks and talks and talks."

 

 

"No, but my lieutenant can, can't he? The first order of business, after Buffy and the rest of her little friends are dead, is to finish the job he started with you."

 

 

Joyce comes at him with her thumb out, aimed straight for his good eye. Before Xander can even yell, she's plunged it in, but of course it passes right through his head, and he's unharmed.

 

 

Not that, exactly. Intact--or as intact as he was.

 

 

Joyce laughs, then disappears into a pinpoint of light, like the picture on the old TV set that used to be in his room.

 

 

He presses the nurse call button, but all he can tell her is he had a dream. She reminds him to breathe, but he can't get it right.

 

 

And there's no amount of Idaho that can erase that image and make it okay to close his eye again.

 

 

5.

 

 

Xander stuffs his shirttail back into his pants, still kind of stunned.

 

 

That was ... wow.

 

 

Hot.

 

 

And cold.

 

 

The chill of the ice cream lingering on her tongue and lips, combined with the satiny heat underlying it, was just mind-blowingly sexy. Plus the fact that they were going at it on the floor of Buffy's kitchen, and anyone could walk in at any time.

 

 

"Ah," he says to Anya, who's similarly rearranging herself. "I'm just, uh, stepping out for a little cool air."

 

 

"I'm going up," she says, and he nods.

 

 

"That was, ah ... You always have been the one person for last-night-on-earth sex." He hopes that isn't the worst thing he could say. Hopes it doesn't make her want to call down vengeance.

 

 

A grin teases at the corner of her mouth. "You too."

 

 

Then she's gone, and he steps out onto the back porch, gulping the night air.

 

 

"Man," says a male voice, and he nearly pisses himself. "Last night on earth, and you're still hiding the truth from everyone."

 

 

Xander squints into the shadows. "And just who the hell -- _Larry?_"

 

 

"I won't say it didn't suck, dying before I even hit twenty. But one thing that made it easier, I didn't go out lying to myself and the rest of the world. I had a year where I was free of all that shit."

 

 

"I remember." He remembers the pep talk Larry had given him, urging him to run a tasteful announcement in the school rag. He'd seemed so free. Happy.

 

 

"I guess I sorta hoped ... well, it sounds stupid, but I hoped maybe I'd been a role model. But nothing's really changed, I guess."

 

 

"Larry, I'm glad you got that right before you died, I really am. But you and me, we're not the same."

 

 

"Closer than you think. I was afraid, too."

 

 

"I'm _not_ afraid. I'm not--"

 

 

"You're scared shitless that they'll find out who you really are. There's not a soul on earth you've trusted with that. You started, then you backed away. I'm grateful you let me in on as much as you did. It made a huge difference to me. I wish you could see that. Tell them. What's the worst that could happen?" Larry grins. "You're all dyin' tomorrow anyway, right?"

 

 

"Y'know, you could stop saying that so cheerfully. It's not the--" Fuck. How could he be so stupid? Standing out here in the dark having a meaningful conversation with a dead guy. For that he should win Moron of the Year. "You're not Larry."

 

 

"Maybe not, but I can help you."

 

 

"Sure you can. Because you're the First Social Worker." He turns to go inside. "Smell ya later." Not his best effort ever, but he's tired, and Larry just brings out the third-grader in him.

 

 

"They will see who you truly are before you die. I'll make certain of that."

 

 

Xander's scalp prickles. _Ignore it. It wants to get inside your head._ He reaches for the door handle. "You might want to get a good night's sleep. You're getting your ass kicked tomorrow."

 

 

"I'll make sure they see every dark, ugly thing inside you. They'll see you begging my priest to kill the Slayer's little sister instead."

 

 

Xander smiles. "Blah blah blah. The great ones reach. The ones who aren't as great as they think sometimes fall on their ass. It's been fun, but I have to go Water Pik now. Larry, though. Interesting choice."

 

 

He heads inside, flipping the lock -- more gesture than anything else -- and hums his way up the stairs.


End file.
